Bill Reynolds: PC just another stop on Alpha Diallo's trek

Saturday

It's one that began in a very different place, one so very far away from the world of college basketball and the dreams he now chases.

On the surface, it reads like a typical basketball journey for these times: high school in Harlem, followed by Frederick Douglass Academy in New York and Brewster Academy in New Hampshire.

But it always was more complicated than that for Providence College junior Alpha Diallo, for the path that took him from the Harlem of his childhood to the polished floor of the Dunkin' Donuts Center was never a straight one.

In truth, it's a journey that started back there in the West Africa of his family's roots, a place his parents knew they had to get away from if their five children were to have better lives. But in a sense Diallo always carries his family's roots with him, as if some sort of moveable feast, forever a reminder of how fortunate he is to be in a place where dreams can come true, if you only work hard enough.

Not that it was ever easy.

Not in the beginning anyway.

There's little question Diallo has paid his basketball dues. Prep schools in Harlem and New Hampshire. Oh yeah, he also played for an AAU team in Colorado. And somewhere in there he found the time to play for Team Africa. Have game, will travel.

"I learned that basketball would take me places,'' he said.

For sure.

A journey.

That's what's so easy to forget these days, the fact that so many of these basketball journeys start out so young now. Midgets. Juniors. This league. That league. Travel Lleagues. All-star leagues. Non-all-star leagues. A league for everyone. Have sneakers, will play. The basketball dream that has almost eclipsed geography, the dream that now seems to exist all over the world, or at least anywhere where there is a ball, a hoop, and an imagination. A journey for everyone.

Diallo certainly has had one. No big surprise. Virtually every college player in the country has had one.

And on an afternoon last week Diallo's long journey took him to a room inside Alumni Hall on the PC campus, so far, far away from where Diallo's roots are. And make no mistake. He knows how very, very far he's traveled, so very far from the Africa of his roots.

"Life is very hard for guys in West Africa,'' he said.

It is said with little emotion, as if it's something he's known for a long time now, one of those little truisms he packed in his suitcase a long time ago, when he first started to follow the bouncing ball and began chasing the dream. Because he knows basketball has opened up the world for him in ways that might have been been unimaginable without it, as if basketball was his real passport.

"I feel very lucky,'' said Alpha Diallo.

He knows his experience at PC has helped him grow, has come to know that it's more than just how many points you score, how many games you win, or even how many postseason tournaments you went to. How it's about entering college as a kid, and leaving as a man.

Can you ask for anything better than that?

Can a college ask for anything better than that?

And maybe more important, if you are Alpha Diallo, can you have better journey than that?

Not many.

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